Authors:

Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - Page 30

All Quotes Adventure Age Aging Alcohol Anarchy Anger Apology Appearance Appreciation Architecture Arguing Army Art Assumption Atheism Atheist Attitude Authority Balance Beer Belief Birth Boat Boredom Buddhism Business Character Charity Chess Children Choices Christ Christianity Christmas Church Coincidence Common Sense Community Confession Contentment Country Courage Crime Criticism Culture Darkness Democracy Desire Destiny Devil Dignity Discipline Dogma Doubt Drinking Duty Earth Education Effort Encouragement Environment Equality Evil Failure Faith Family Fashion Fear Feelings Fighting Food Free Love Freedom Friendship Fun Funny Genius Giving God Gold Gratitude Greek Grief Happiness Hate Hatred Heart Heaven History Holiday Home Hope House Human Nature Humanity Humility Hurt Ignorance Imagination Independence Innocence Inspiration Inspirational Inspiring Islam Jesus Journey Joy Justice Knowledge Language Laughter Leadership Learning Leaving Liberalism Liberty Life Literature Logic Losing Love Lying Madness Materialism Memories Military Modesty Moon Morality Morning Motivational Nature Optimism Pain Painting Passion Past Peace Personality Pessimism Philosophy Plato Pleasure Politics Poverty Power Pride Progress Purpose Quality Rage Rain Reading Reality Religion Revolution Romance Running Sacrifice Sadness Sanity School Science Silence Simplicity Sin Sleep Socialism Son Soul Spirituality Sports Spring Style Suffering Tea Teaching Thankful Thanksgiving Theology Time Today Tolerance Tradition Tragedy Travel Truth Tyranny Understanding Virtue Vision Voting Waiting Wall War Water Wealth Wife Wine Wisdom Wit Worship Writing Youth
Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion.

Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Doubt, Dogma
Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

IF we desire European civilization to be a raid and a rescue, we shall insist rather that souls are in real peril than that their peril is ultimately unreal. And if we wish to exalt the outcast and the crucified, we shall rather wish to think that a veritable God was crucified, rather than a mere sage or hero. Above all, if we wish to protect the poor we shall be in favour of fixed rules and clear dogmas. The rules of a club are occasionally in favour of the poor member. The drift of a club is always in favour of the rich one.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Real, Hero, Thinking

We all feel the riddle of the earth without anyone to point it out. The mystery of life is the plainest part of it. The clouds and curtains of darkness, the confounding vapors, these are the daily weather of this world.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Clouds, Weather, Darkness
William Blake (1910)

The martyr endured tortures to affirm his belief in truth but he never asserted his disbelief in torture.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Belief, Torture, Martyr

The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Nature, Inspiration, World
"Tremendous Trifles". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1909.

The whole point of the Eugenic pseudo-scientific theories is that they are to be applied wholesale, by some more sweeping and generalizing money power than the individual husband or wife or household. Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each other's.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Clever, Husband, Stupid

We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Sacrifice, Hatred, Humanity
"Orthodoxy". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Chapter VIII. "The Romances of Orthodoxy", 1908.

When a person has found something which he prefers to life itself, he for the first time has begun to live.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Firsts, Found, First Time

Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about their aims.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Process, Aim, Vigorous
Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.128, Simon and Schuster

The thing that cannot be defined is the first thing; the primary fact.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Science, Technology, Firsts
"Charles Dickens". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1906.

I am a journalist and have no earthly motives except curiosity and personal vanity.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Vanity, Curiosity, Motive

The prophet and the quack are alike admired for a generation, and admired for the wrong reasons.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Generations, Reason, Prophet

But since he stood for England And knew what England means, Unless you give him bacon You must not give him beans.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Food, Mean, Giving
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “The Englishman”

There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing which most people take less trouble about learning. An art school is a place where about three people work with feverish energy and everybody else idles to a degree that I should have conceived unattainable by human nature.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art, School, Should Have

I have formed a very clear conception of patriotism. I have generally found it thrust into the foreground by some fellow who has something to hide in the background. I have seen a great deal of patriotism; and I have generally found it the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Lasts, Found, Scoundrels
"The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. 11: Collected Plays and Chesterton on Shaw". Book edited by Denis J. Conlon, 1989.

Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Exercise, Sea, Infinite
"Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Reality, Men, Progress

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. ... It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wilderness lies in wait.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Real, Lying, Waiting
"Orthodoxy". Chapter VI: "The Paradoxes of Christianity". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1908.

A great city is the place to escape the true drama of provincial life, and find solace in fantasy.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Drama, Cities, Fantasy

Architecture approaches nearer than any other art to being irrevocable because it is so difficult to get rid of.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art, Architecture, Difficult

Plato was right, but not quite right.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Plato
"Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1934.

For my part, I should be inclined to suggest that the chief object of education should be to restore simplicity. If you like to put it so, the chief object of education is not to learn things; nay, the chief object of education is to unlearn things.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Simplicity, Should, Chiefs
"All Things Considered". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1908.

To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Mind, Theology, Humans

But pure wit is akin to Puritanism; to the perfect and painful consciousness of the final fact in the universe. Very briefly, the man who sees the consistency in things is a wit - and a Calvinist. The man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist - and a Catholic.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men, Perfect, Catholic

Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
Air, Space, Long

You May Also Like: